One Theory Has BofA Moving to Charlotte to Spite S.F. Critics

Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, April 15, 1998

1998-04-15 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- BankAmerica's merger with NationsBank, and the bombshell announcement that the new headquarters would move to Charlotte, N.C., caught Mayor Willie Brown by complete surprise -- but the fact is, relations between San Francisco and the hometown BofA have been strained in recent years.

At the center of the ill feelings are allegations that BofA cheated scores of California cities and agencies out of hundreds of millions of dollars in municipal funds.

San Francisco City Attorney Louise Renne -- who has filed a lawsuit seeking $12 million -- has been an early and very vocal leader in the fight against BofA.

At one point, she suggested that BofA put a warning on its advertising that "no accurate records" are being kept.

Mayor Brown -- never one to shy away from the microphone himself -- dove into the fray in December, telling a gathering of municipal and state officials that he was looking forward to the day when he'd read the headline "Local Jurisdictions Prevail Over BofA."

How much of an effect all this had on the move to Charlotte is debatable.

"It's like a flea on the back of a dog in the scheme of things," said one respected San Francisco investment banker who asked not to be named.

But another giant of the investment banking community, Warren Hellman, believes otherwise.

"We seem to have an attitude here with our major headquarters . . . that we can malign them and treat them with great contempt and they're not going to do anything about it," says Hellman, who is a personal friend of BofA boss David Coulter.

"Corporations are run by people, and people have feelings. I'm sure Coulter doesn't appreciate public officials (like Renne) delivering diatribes against BofA," he said.

Hellman says the Charlotte move "shocked" him as much as anyone (Mayor Brown found out when he got 5 a.m. calls from reporters).

Still, Hellman can't help but believe the city's lawsuit didn't influence the degree to which Coulter fought to keep the headquarters here.

"At some place in his mind," Hellman says, "maybe San Francisco wasn't so important to fight for."

"That's laughable," responds Renne. "The amount of money we're talking about is peanuts to BofA. This merger is about power and ego and putting money into shareholder pockets.

"The idea that this lawsuit is even a factor in this decision is laughable, but if it's true, then it surely sends a bad message."

CAPTAIN HOOK: Talk about high noon, a new lawman landed at Treasure Island last week, and within days the live-in boyfriend of former mayoral paramour Wendy Linka found himself under arrest.

Here's the story:

For months, Linka and her beau, Kevin Bowers, have been sharing the city-owned digs that Linka rents on the former naval base. (Linka was given a Treasure Island job by her ex-boyfriend, Mayor Brown.)

Current boyfriend Bowers, it seems, has been trying to order city workers around on the island. He also has a habit of driving around with expired plates.

"But no one would touch him. They were all afraid of what Wendy would do, or what the mayor would do," said one cop stationed on the island.

That is, until Captain Richard Cairns -- the new law in town -- showed up.

Within 48 hours, Bowers found himself being pulled over. A subsequent check found that besides not having a driver's license, he had two outstanding warrants for drunken driving from nearby counties.

By the way, Young himself was busted a couple of years back for holding a cache of illegal arms.

Some kind of town, huh?

MULL ON THIS: Republicans had every right to flip out this week when Democratic operative Bob Mulholland said he was thinking about looking into the sex lives of GOP lawmakers who may sit in judgment of President Clinton.

Because when it comes to digging up dirt, you'd be hard pressed to find a bigger shovel than Mulholland.

Just ask former Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Bruce Herschensohn, who found himself blown out of the water in the final days of his neck-and-neck race against Barbara Boxer in 1992 -- thanks in large part to Mulholland.

Back then, party operative Mulholland showed up at a Herschensohn press confab in Chico and asked the archconservative candidate about his fondness for a certain L.A. strip joint.

(Mulholland says he didn't go looking for the story, but when he got a phone tip about it, he sent an intern down to L.A. to check it out.)

At first, Herschensohn tossed off Mulholland's charge as a bad joke -- but by week's end, he found himself under an avalanche of bad press.

"It worked because a lot of your colleagues in the press were sympathetic to Boxer and gave it a big ride," says a still fuming Ken Khachigian, the former Herschensohn campaign manager.

But don't look to Mulholland for regrets about this stunt or his more recent threat: "If someone is accusing our people of morals problems, then I think the public has the right to know about theirs."

And then some.

Latest from the SFGATE homepage:

Click below for the top news from around the Bay Area and beyond. Sign up for our newsletters to be the first to learn about breaking news and more. Go to 'Sign In' and 'Manage Profile' at the top of the page.